2012 Apocalypse, Part 2 (Dissecting Pseudoscience)

Continuing the dissection of the 2012 doomsday idiocy.

References:

Music used:
"Eighties Action" and "Merry Go" by Kevin MacLeod
Both are used with permission.

Image used:
"Earnie the Emu" by bluegum
CC: Attribution (license info included at the URL above)
Used with permission.

Space footage captured from Celestia.

Background and intro animation made by me.

[davebeech]

I've only recently discovered this guy's work but he's absolutely brilliant. Surely some TV executive can see what's patently obvious? GET THIS DUDE ON TV, WORLDWIDE, RIGHT

[LadyDoomsinger]

People have predicted the End since the beginning, and will continue to do so until the End. At which point, they'll finally be right.

That's why I never set a time frame on my doomsday prophecies. "Eventually" is good enough for me.

[ivanljujic]

I was 10-11 years old when this was a thing. I remember seeing Discovery channel documentary on it and I was really scared, nearly traumatised. I Had trouble falling asleep for weeks, wondering "why would god let that happen" and "why did I get born in an era that ends while I'm so young". I'm not religious but as a kid, I believed in an unspecified, but christian-like god.

The fact that I remember how upset I was, 9 years later, just shows that it really affected me. Ofc it did, I was just a kid, and an impressionable one at that.

It's safe to say that these conspiracy theories and fantasies can have real, negative impact on people, and the world would be a better place without them.

Sure, they may bring _some_ people together, but so can other, less damaging subjects.

[Zentauri]

I like the image of that ostrich. Their eyeballs are bigger than their brain, which is a perfect analogy imho.
Seeing with open eyes, but lacking the mental capacity to process the data received in a rational way.

[cassandraxiv]

*Sam:* ""The singularity is about to explode"?"
*Martin:* **pleased** "Yes..."
*Sam:* "Everything about that statement is wrong."

[craigore]

Wait, didn't the world already end in 2011 and no one noticed? Harold Camping (stroke victim) said he was certain there was no way it wasn't gonna happen! So therefore it must've and we slept right through it! The end was then people! The end was then!!!
(great quote from nephie btw, I'll have to archive that one)

[Martymer]

It was certainly inspired by it, but I did the "did you just out-stupid xxx!?" thing a couple times before, so it's a bit more than that.

[golden-]

Calling Neph brain dead is an insult to brain dead people. 

[The_Desert_Tiger]

"Wait did you just out stupid bill O'reilly" I almost fell off my chair laughing at that one.

[et]

it's 2018 and still no apocalypse

[TheNosoulevr]

"Wait! Did you just out stupid Bill O'Reilly?" =)- 

[netic_fx]

One of my favorite things I have ever had someone do is a teacher who said "You can not disprove flat Earth it is impossible" wanting someone to object. I did, in 12 years I was only the 3ed.

[thulean.uruk-hai]

Even back around the time you originally posted this video, I was telling people who claimed they thought the prediction had merit that if they really believed it then they should be selling off all their stuff and enjoying their time while they could, otherwise why were they wasting their last few days slaving away at work?

None of them quit their jobs, sold their houses and ran off to Hawaii. I wonder why. ::snicker::

[Martymer]

Sure, eventually the tidal forces would result in seismic activity, but the first thing we'd notice is tides behaving differently. If it doesn't affect water on the surface, it's not going to affect the crust itself, which is way more massive.

[Martymer]

I'll buy that there could be an unknown quantum mechanical phenomenon that could cause a black hole to explode (though I doubt it), but this would not change the total energy of the black hole and thus the curvature of spacetime at the event horizon. As a result, anything thrown "out" by the explosion would still be thrown toward the singularity. Unless someone can explain where I went wrong, I don't see how anyone outside the hole could ever know it exploded.

[BenderLens]

I knew a few people that took it very seriously. One of their entire family went up to Kentucky for 2 weeks in December just in case.

[JaftenLKA]

Actually, is is entirely possible for black holes to "explode".

...Well, okay, let me clarify: when I say "black holes" here, I really mean "any region of spacetime where a concentration of mass-energy and/or radiation (see: Kugelblitz) is so dense it generates a gravitational singularity." Which is to say, not just stellar (and more massive) black holes, but also hypothetical micro black holes. And when I say "explosion, " I mean "a violent release of energy, " which I admit is still rather vague and dependent on ones' subjective opinion of what constitutes a "violent release."

As you most likely (definitely) already know, the more massive a star is, the shorter its lifespan tends to be, due to how stellar nucleosynthesis works. The opposite is [theorized to be] true for black holes: the more massive one is, the longer its lifespan will be, due to how Hawking radiation works. This logically means that a micro black hole should have an incredibly short lifespan.

Let's say we make the Eiffel Tower into a black hole (because reasons). That would create a micro black hole with a mass of ~10, 100 tonnes, a radius of ~150 zeptometers (1.50x10^-19 m), and a lifespan of almost 2.75 years. On the surface, that wouldn't seem like it should qualify for an "exploding black hole, " until one realizes that due to Hawking radiation it would be emitting very-high-energy gamma rays with a luminosity of almost 35 petawatts (3.49x10^16 W) at a temperature of over 1.2 quadrillion Kelvin.

Is that a lot of energy compared to something like the Sun's luminosity? Not at all (actually, it's over 90% the Sun's luminosity, but you get the point). Nevertheless, I am inclined to believe that most _sane_ people would consider the emission of photons equivalent to almost _8.35 megatons of TNT per second_ to be "a violent release of energy"—especially if they were unfortunate enough to be anywhere remotely close to the damned thing. Obviously, even less massive micro black holes would have a much smaller "payload, " but would dissipate even more violently, making them even more similar to a conventional explosion.

[wolfwing]

One quick correction ;> WR-104 is a possible canidate, though it's since been shown to not likly cause trouble, but it's only 8000 light years away and a few years back there was some concern that it could send a Gama Ray burst this way, and from our point of view could go anywhere in the next few thousand years. The concern was the pole appeared to be looking our way, but more recent measurements show it's not ;> So maybe thats what they are talking about. But like creationist don't update

[HConstantine]

Didn't you see the video of a sunset where some weird camera effect doubles the image--that second sun is Nibiru! It said so right in the description bar!

[ianmathwiz]

Any bets on whether the answer involves some butchering of the term "wave function?"